Abstract paper photography

Abstract paper photography

We recently became aware of a tutorial on abstract paper photography by Ben Tuxworth on the Adaptalux blog.
This simple method seemed perfect for children of all ages to create and photograph so we have it a go.

Abstract paper photography tutorial

Watch the video from Ben at Adaptalux to give to us better idea of what is involved.

Our approach to abstract paper photography

The setup

First of all we used a large sheet of translucent plastic from a frame as our base.
We place the sheet of plastic on an upturned stool so that we would have room to put a light underneath.
If you have a glass table this would work even better.
A sheet of paper was placed over the sheet of plastic to diffuse the light below.

Creating our paper shape

We started off with a simple shape using three sheets of A4 paper bend in half and taped together.
This shape was strong enough to stand upright unaided.

The lighting

The scene was lit by non direct sunlight so it was already bright.
Our second light source was a LED video light that has the ability to change colours.
This was placed under the glass surface.

The shoot

We began by choosing different colours and photographing straight down onto the paper.
We brought the iPhone as close as possible to the paper so that it was still in focus.

After a few shots we experimented with changing the position of the light.

Editing the images

The photos were cropped and edited in the Snapseed app.
Saturation, contrast and brightness was increased.
We didn’t want to increase sharpness as this made the images too grainy. In the end we were happy to the smooth pastel look to the images.

Combining images

We decide to open the images in Adobe Spark Post to create some montages from our images.
We played around with adding boarders and combined images together.

Author: Michael Shilling

Memory Gate Director Michael has worked as a professional photographer since 2001 after qualifying from his Photography degree at Manchester Metropolitan University.
In that time he’s photographed studio portraits of over half a million people in four continents.